Printing with curable inks is well known in the art. Curable ink is generally understood to include ink which solidifies due to a reaction.
A curing technology of particular interest in the field of printing is Ultra Violet (UV) Curing. In UV curing, UV light interacts with specially formulated ink chemistries to turn liquid ink into a solid, thereby curing the ink faster and more economically than some traditional curing methods such as heating the ink.
At present, solvent-based, water-based and UV curable inks are printed in a multi-pass mode, where at each pass of one or more printheads across a substrate, an amount of ink is deposited on the substrate from the printhead(s). By moving the printhead(s) relative to the substrate, a printed image can then be built up in successive multiple passes of the printhead(s) across the substrate.
However, printing with UV curable inks can present two main problems. Firstly, the ink from the “last pass” may get less curing energy/cycles then the ink printed in the earlier passes. Thus, the ink from later passes and/or the final pass may not always be cured sufficiently. Secondly, the ink from the “first pass” may receive a large amount of ink which can affect its adhesion to the substrate.
Thus, it is desirable to develop an improved printing device and/or method for printing with curable ink. Preferably, such an improved printing device and/or method may help to alleviate one or more of problems identified above.